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Which has worked all these years.
But here she is, this blonde bombshell who has no freaking clue that that’s exactly what she is, and she’s asking me to tell her one of my most protected secrets?
My first instinct is to lie. It’s just easier that way, especially since I’m not planning on having her here for very much longer.
But I can’t get the image of her and Lev out of my head. Every time I blink, I see them on the floor, peeking at each other from between their parted fingers. It’s not a connection he has made often.
Or at all.
And it feels selfish, even cruel, to lie to her now. Perhaps, in order to get her to trust me, I need to show her thatItrusther.
It begs the question; when was the last time I trusted anyone outside of my inner circle? Am I making a huge mistake by trusting her?
Am I going to look back at this moment one day and think,That’s where it all went wrong?
Only one way to find out.
25
ALYSSA
Uri’s usually unreadable mask cracks for a split second. His eyes darken, his brow furrows, and his right hand clenches into a fist.
For the first time, I stop thinking about the politics. I forget about the fact that I’m his captive and he’s my jailer. I choose to ignore the complicated, irreparably fucked-up dynamics between us.
Instead, I speak from the heart.
“Uri… I know I’ve only just met Lev, but I do care about him. And I would never do or say anything to hurt him.”
His gaze meets mine. If he chooses not to tell me Lev’s story, I won’t push him. Because I get it. I understand the need to want to protect someone you love at any cost.
I pull at my Z charm and wait for him to decide what he wants to do. The silence drags on for what feels like an hour. Then finally—
He sighs. “Sit down.”
I walk over to the bed and perch down on the edge of it. Then I pat the empty space next to me. He saunters over and sits, leaving only a foot or two between us. It’s closer than I’m expecting. He smells like coffee this morning. Coffee and cinnamon.
He closes his eyes. “Lev was in the car accident that killed my parents.”
It’s weird. I’m expecting a sad story—a horrible one, in fact—and yet I still have a visceral reaction to hearing it. My body goes cold and goosebumps spread along my arms and legs.
“My father was driving. Lev was in the back seat. He was twelve years old at the time.”
“My God,” I murmur. “That’s too young.”
“A train derailed. A bad length of track made the railway engineer lose control. We found out later that there was an inspection oversight and the train was already en route before anyone caught it.”
I clap my hands over my mouth. “That’s horrible.”
“When it hit their car, it was going fast enough to do some serious damage. But that wasn’t it. The car tumbled over the lip of a ravine and went bouncing down. The train followed and crushed the car beneath it. It was a fucking disaster. One after the next after the next.”
His eyes are still closed. With every word, I notice little twitches in his face. As if he’s feeling the pain of every roll of the car, every twist of metal, every crack of glass.
“Seventeen people died in that derailment. Including my parents. It took days to scale down the cliffside and get to them, though. Nikolai and I went in with our father’s men and found the car, trapped in the ravine. We were sure it was over for all of them, but when we got down there… Lev was still breathing.” He stops for a moment and his face smooths over. “I should say, he was barely breathing. Another hour and he would have been dead. That’s how close we came to losing him.”
I can’t imagine it. The horror of knowing your parents are dead, but then tofindtheir bodies? To pull them from the wreckage knowing there’s no hope anymore?
That Lev survived at all is nothing short of a miracle.
